speak to her, his love, his Dainty, his
true wife, whose heart was breaking for one tender word from his dear
lips!

CHAPTER XXIX.

AS WE KISS THE DEAD.

Alas! nor words, nor tears, nor embraces, nor reproaches could move Love
Ellsworth from his statue-like repose.

He suffered Dainty's caresses passively, but he did not return them, and
his large, beautiful dark eyes dwelt on her face with the gentle calm of
an infant whose intellect is not yet awakened.

"You see how it is, Miss Chase, and God knows how sorry I am to see my
dear master so," Franklin said, sorrowfully, as she desisted at last,
and gazed in silent anguish at the mental wreck in the chair.

A new thought came to her, and she exclaimed:

"Where is my mother?"

"She returned to Richmond almost a month ago, Miss Chase."

"Why did she not remain and nurse poor Love?" she groaned.

Franklin hesitated a moment, then returned in a respectful undertone:

"I can not say for a certainty, miss, but it is whispered among the
servants that Mrs. Ellsworth sent her away because the young ladies
wished it."

"The young ladies?" inquiringly.

"Miss Peyton and Miss Craye, your cousins. Mrs. Ellsworth has adopted
them as her joint heiresses since she came into the fortune that my
master lost by his failure to marry on his twenty-sixth birthday."

He gave a great start of surprise when the lovely, sad-eyed girl
answered quickly:

"He did not lose it, for in the fear of some such treachery as afterward
really happened, your master persuaded me to consent to a secret
marriage in the middle of July, so that I have really been his wife
going on three months."

"It is false!" cried an angry voice; and there in the door-way towered
the tall form of Mrs. Ellsworth, pale to the very lips, but with an
ominous flash in her dark eyes.

She had recovered from the faintness that had seized her at first sight
of the supposed ghost, on being assured by a servant that she had seen
Miss Chase in the flesh entering the room of Mr. Ellsworth. As soon as
she could command her shaken nerves, she followed Dainty just in time to
hear her avowal of her marriage to Love in July.

"It is false!" she cried, furiously; but Dainty faced her bravely,
clasping Love's cold, irresponsive hand in her own, exclaiming tenderly:

"He is my husband!"

"Can you prove it?" sneeringly.

Dainty was very pale, and trembling like a wind-blown leaf, but she
summoned courage to repl